Local Sports

Croissant, Barkdoll reach third-place match at state for Wiggins

By Brandon Boles

Fort Morgan Times

Posted:
02/17/2018 05:04:20 PM MST

Wiggins senior Cael Croissant traps Oran Huff of Lyons and scores back points in the third period of their third-place match at 126 pounds in the 2A state wrestling tournament on Saturday, Feb. 17, 2018 at Pepsi Center. (Brandon Boles / Fort Morgan Times)

DENVER — It's been a few years since the Wiggins Tigers could say that they placed two wrestlers at the state tournament.

Marc Barkdoll and Cael Croissant changed that for the program on Saturday.

Both wrestlers bounced back from their semifinal loss with a win in the consolation semifinals Saturday morning to reach the third-place match in their weight class. Croissant came through with a win by fall to finish in third and Barkdoll took fourth place.

Croissant lost to No. 1 seed Sean Dale of Cedaredge in the semifinals at 126 pounds by majority decision and used that loss as motivation in the consolation bracket. He got back to pushing the pace and created the first takedown to carry him to two wins by fall on Saturday. The first came against Isiah Wellman of Mountain Valley late in the third period to reach the third-place match.

Wiggins junior Marc Barkdoll shoots in for the double-leg takedown against Cole Rockwell of Wray in the third-place match for 106 pounds in the 2A state wrestling tournament on Saturday, Feb. 17, 2018 at Pepsi Center. (Brandon Boles / Fort Morgan Times)

In his final match, Croissant faced Oran Huff of Lyons for third place. It would be Huff who got the takedown in the first period to lead 2-0, but Croissant picked up the pace the rest of the way. Fighting in the tie-up to score, he finally got to the back with 15 seconds to spare to tie the match going into the third period. Huff would get taken down and Croissant never let go in the third period until he locked in a cradle and won by fall at the 4:34 mark.

For Barkdoll, he clinched a spot in the third-place match in dominating fashion. Within seconds of his match with Michael Romero of Swink, he landed the takedown and worked to get the win by fall in 44 seconds, marking the second win by fall in less than a minute at state. His win put him against a familiar foe in Cole Rockwell of Wray in the final match.

Advertisement

The first period was dominated by Barkdoll with an early takedown, two back points, and a second takedown before the whistle to lead 6-1. Rockwell found himself in the air as Barkdoll tried to lift him up and throw him down for a hard takedown. When he did, he ended up in a bad position, allowing Rockwell to slide on top and sink in a pin at the 1:29 mark to win by fall.

Devon Harshman was the final wrestler to compete for the Tigers at state and finished with a 1-2 record. His run began on Thursday against Devin Curtis of Hotchkiss as he lost by fall in the first period. Harshman battled back in the consolation bracket to win a 4-2 decision over Taylor Scott of Burlington before falling to Ridge Williams of Meeker by decision 3-2.

Wiggins finished with 38 team points in the tournament. It tied them with Fort Morgan before the finals were underway Saturday night.

Article Comments

We reserve the right to remove any comment that violates our ground rules, is spammy, NSFW, defamatory, rude, reckless to the community, etc.

We expect everyone to be respectful of other commenters. It's fine to have differences of opinion, but there's no need to act like a jerk.

Use your own words (don't copy and paste from elsewhere), be honest and don't pretend to be someone (or something) you're not.

Our commenting section is self-policing, so if you see a comment that violates our ground rules, flag it (mouse over to the far right of the commenter's name until you see the flag symbol and click that), then we'll review it.